Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day – A Love/Hate Relationship With Daylilies

By Carol Cichorski, on July 15th, 2013

Imagine a field of daylilies. Better yet, leave nothing to the imagination and just look at the pictures of Open Heart and Siloam Ribbon Candy. You can see why Mike and I came home from the daylily farm many years ago with clumps of several different varieties.

Right now, they are all A+ gorgeous, which easily explains the love side of my relationship with daylilies. They certainly do belong here on Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, where bloggers like me show gardeners like you how our gardens look on 15th of each month. The daylilies are a prime bloomer for me in July.

Looking at these pictures, this would seem to be strictly a love relationship. Especially since I had heard how daylilies were low maintenance. Yah baby!

I’d love it if daylilies were low maintenance. Unfortunately, I don’t consider them to be. Like the name says, daylilies last a day. Enjoy a new one tomorrow as you deadhead yesterday’s finished flower. To make matters worse, unlike some flowers whose foliage still looks good after the blooms are spent, daylily leaves get yellow, then brown. Day by day, bit by bit. Soon, I’ll be cleaning up that mess just like I did in years past.

Would I do it again? Would I come home with so many? What would I do differently? They are beautiful, strikingly beautiful. So yes, I’d buy them again. Probably not so many since the amount of time spent on cleanup is significant. I’ve had some success at hiding the yellowing leaves behind other plants, so I’d intersperse them more instead of giving them their own area as I did at first. They are tolerant of sun through partial shade so I’d have lots of placement options. I’d also aim for different bloom times to spread out the flowering.

Do you want to know what else is blooming in the July garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.

I’m with you, Carol. In my GBBD blog, I write about plants that look good now that I’ll be keeping in the next reincarnation of my garden. There are about three varieties of daylilies that I’ve kept so far, but know the day will come when I’ll probably chuck them out to grow something else. Admittedly, they are trial plants, so I haven’t actually bought them. But I also understand you’re love for them, especially those with heavy substance and piecrust edging, my personal favorites. Thanks for posting.